The Boy loves to spend money. He has a million and one ideas about what he’s going to buy, and it changes from day to day. We protected his first communion money and steered him toward spending it on something useful: a new bike. However, his allowance is a different story.

This week, he decided he wanted to buy a prank kit. He spent $15 on kit that included

• a whoopee cushion,
• a small plastic finger that one pulls to create a sound that I think is supposed to sound like flatulence but instead sounds like just wildly chaotic noise;
• slime, and
• some kind of strange little bouncy rubber ball.

Four items that probably cost a total of $2 to make, and he paid $15 for it. K advised him that it was not the best way to spend his money. It was especially ill-advised since the last time he bought a whoopee cushion, it burst the first time he sat on it. (I always thought the idea was that someone else sat on it, but I guess I was wrong.)

Today, at dinner, he had an epiphany: “I wasted that money!” The realization caused great stress, but K reassured him: “If you learned a lesson from it, it’s money well spent.”